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Balearic Lighthouses Website becomes a point of authority for residents and visitors to the islands

Our project was based on the creation of a website which provided information on the cultural and historical heritage of the Port Authority, so that the organisation would gain notoriety as a point of authority in the Balearics.

Port Authority

The ‘Autoridad Portuaria de Baleares’ (APB) or Port of Authority is a public body which was created in 1992 and is based in Palma de Mallorca. The organisation was created by the Spanish State and falls under the Ministry of Development, but has its own legal identity and assets. The organisations within the Port Authority include port management for those with general interest in Spain. The APB manages the five ports considered of general interest in the Balearic Islands: the ports of Palma and Alcudia in Mallorca, Mahon in Menorca, Port of Ibiza and La Savina in Formentera.

The APB has the task of managing the state ports in the Balearic Islands. These ports generate great economic benefits for its transportation of goods as well as the entry and exit of people; thus making them a strategic point for society and the island’s economy. Its services are therefore aimed at businesses and citizens, and apart from the management and administration of the Balearic ports, it publishes annual reports on the financial status and port activities.

The Challenge

The Solution

Results

The Challenge

Every organisation, regardless of their activity, cites visibility in the market as one of their main concerns. Gaining exposure is an important challenge for many companies who want to build a target audience and, with sales, make their business grow. This challenge has grown since the rise in popularity of the Internet, which in recent years has become a digital platform for companies. However, every organisation must have their own identity and brand awareness; something that involves much more than sales.

Despite being a public body, the APB did not have a strong identity which connected them to the Balearic community beyond commercial activity. While the management of the island’s ports is an essential task for economic activity, the APB wanted to find a way to foster a closer relationship with the community. The approach was based on a desire to demonstrate that the port industry is more than just transporting goods and citizens.

The APB has an important historical and cultural heritage; age-old buildings that contain, in addition to port activity, the history of the Balearics, such as the well-known Fuerte de San Carlos in Mallorca. Some of its most important buildings are lighthouses, which reflect the island’s history. For this reason they have high cultural value, both in their construction and for the way that they inspire photography.

Spain has long been an important commercial maritime, with a total of 187 lighthouses scattered along its coast, 60 of them still being operational. In recent years, efforts to make lighthouses attractive to tourists has been implemented so that they remain active whether they are operational or not.

The APB has 34 lighthouses in the Balearic Islands, which they saw as an opportunity to get closer to the Balearic society; transforming the lighthouses into new tourist attractions. Their idea was to create an online platform dedicated specifically to providing information to citizens about the lighthouses scattered around the islands. To carry out this initiative, it was necessary to have an innovative proposal that, in addition to providing value, would act as a powerful communication tool between the APB, residents and visitors to the island.

The Solution

Our solution for the APB was a creative proposal that not only responded to the needs and expectations of the APB, but also contributed improvements that added more value to their initiative. We invest a lot of effort in organizing and updating all the information of the APB for its diffusion through Internet, defining an original online platform architecture and aligned with the graphic style of the entity. This online platform was a new website dedicated specifically to the APB heritage lighthouses: FarsdeBalears.com. The objective was to convert it into a reference online portal for lighthouse tourism, with extensive documentation and a attractive audiovisual content that would serve as a great source of information for citizens and visitors.

To contribute valuable content to the website, we are dedicated to making a collection of lighthouse documentation and working on its digitization; this compilation included research on the 34 lighthouses of the Balearic Islands, their stories and those of their lighthouse keepers, information on the machinery used in the lighthouses, etc. So the website is a large digital archive with the stories of lighthouses and lighthouse keepers of the islands that have been registered since 1851. As part of our proposal to add more value to the Fars de Balears project we decided to expand the documentation of the Digital file to the lighthouse pages in Wikipedia, just like our team got the location of the 34 headlights in Google Maps.

This online archive was completed with audio-visual content. On the one hand, compiling a collection of photographs donated by local and international artists from the lighthouses of the islands. The documentation of the old files allowed to add documents such as maps, letters and photographs. In addition, we take care of taking 360º photographs of the 34 lighthouses, from two or three different perspectives in each case, and we managed to prepare a virtual tour through the Portopí lighthouse. On the other hand, we conducted a video marketing campaign in which we prepared an attractive visual documentation: we recorded a total of nine video interviews with former lighthouse keepers from the Balearic Islands and at the same lighthouses where they served.

Finally, we opted for an original solution that would be both a value and a differentiating bet: the creation of an application for cycling routes for mobile devices (Ruta.FarsdeBalears.com). These routes were prepared for the bicycle trip from one lighthouse to another, showing details such as the distance in kilometers, the duration of the journey and the difficulty. In this way cycling enthusiasts could carry out these routes with the lighthouses as tourist points, as well as having the option of listening to the audio guides that we prepared with information about each lighthouse.

Results

The result is to have given birth to a unique portal in the world, which gathers a material of incalculable value that until now had never been exhibited publicly. The project allowed the photographic and audiovisual record documenting the nature and current state of conservation of the lighthouses, as well as the voices of the protagonists of the history of many of them.

After the website was launched, the project attracted attention in the media, from television to local and national press, in media such as Diario de Mallorca and Europa Press. The impact was very positive among the citizens, especially in the first guided visits by the APB, which were previously recorded hundreds of people, a number that exceeded the number of visitors expected. Such has been the impact that generated interest from the European Union itself to consider a similar project for other parts of the continent.

In this way, the Port Authority of the Balearic Islands has found a point of support in the strategy of approaching Mallorcan society, achieving significant media coverage and the participation of citizens in numerous events that have been organized around the lighthouses. The lighthouses of the Balearic Islands have been established as new tourist elements and are already part of Balearic society's knowledge.

The result is to have given birth to a unique portal in the world, which gathers a material of incalculable value that until now had never been exhibited publicly.

Such has been the impact that generated interest from the European Union itself to consider a similar project for other parts of the continent.